Why Doesn’t My Data Listen to Me?

Apr 19, 2012 by Phil Simon

One of my favorite Porcupine Tree songs is “I Drive The Hearse.” Here are some of the song’s haunting lyrics:

The plan for the project looks so good

Apr 14, 2010 by Jim Harris

Recently while I was brainstorming some ideas for writing blog posts about some of the common challenges of project management, several different songs started playing in my head.

Perhaps perfectly exemplifying the weird way that my mind makes connections between seemingly disparate thoughts, I kept returning to the lyrics from the song Lights by Victoria Williams:

“What kind of song would you sing  
If you had a song to sing?  
What kind of life would you live  
If you had a life to live?

Would you want to make something good  
That you could look on  
Give you lots of pleasure?  
Yeah, you would

What about this thing that you gave  
What if it weren’t quite perfect  
What if there was something bad about it?  
Would you love it just the same?  
Would you still care about it?”

To Load or Not to Load: Confucius and The Argument for “All or Nothing Data Quality"

Dec 21, 2009 by Phil Simon

“The Superior Man is all-embracing and not partial. The inferior man is partial and not all-embracing.”

—Confucius

As the year comes to a close, I am wrapping up a particularly crazy project involving to activation of a new system and the retirement of a legacy one. While I have worked on dozens of these projects in my career, I am continually amazed at end-users’ routine willingness to load suspect data into new systems. In this post, I will apply Confucius’ quote above to DQ during a new system implementation:

Confucius says DQ should be a binary proposition: either load it all or load none of it.

I cite four reasons for my “all or nothing” stance.

PMP – and the Master Data Management Project (Initiating)

Nov 25, 2009 by Joyce Norris-Montanari

Initiating a project, using PMI vernacular, is the beginning of what we would do to start a project.  In our case, we are going to compare and use the PMI Framework for our Master Data Management Project.  Our assumption is that we are managing this endeavor.  The PMI Initiating Process (for the project manager) would include:

1.    Select and assign the project manager – guess that is us!

2.    Review company culture, existing systems, existing processes, existing procedure, and any historical information that may benefit this project.  This is extremely important to understand how past projects, or similar projects were addressed and implemented in this corporation.  For example, has this company EVER tried to create master data before?  Have they previously gathered business requirements?  Were there any technical specifications created?  You can also review: